"Hope is my catalyst."

——————————————————————————————————————————————–Everyday NhanSense: Each day, I will blog about something that comes to mind. My goal is to practice writing about my hobbies, my interests, my opinions and so forth.

Day 35’s Topic: Finding the right friends.——————————————————————————————————————————————–Throughout my life, I have always had my group of friends. They may not have been many in number by any means, but I always appreciated having that particular group to call my own. I’ll admit I can be a bit of a social oddball in my own ways, so it was like I was always that square piece trying to fit into into what society deemed as the “proper circle.”

Basically, it has always been a mini-challenge to wedge myself into social structures and mingle with others confidently. Regardless, I have managed.

Take high school for instance. I bounced around during lunch time with a lot of groups.

The kids who ate lunch in the parking lot.

The other kids who took honor classes like me.

Some sports groups.

The card-playing groups.

There were days I couldn’t tell you why I decided to eat with a certain group for whatever reason. But looking back, I guess my favorite group was honestly just a certain group of friends.

I’ll admit it. We were geeks. We talked a lot about anime, video games and a bunch of other topics that high schoolers would be called dorks for, but I didn’t care. I enjoyed eating lunch with them and just being able to hold conversations without stammering.

What can I say? I fit in perfectly.

I wish I accepted being a nerd back in those days. Quite frankly, it was a lot of inner denial.

I’m not a nerd. I’m not a nerd. I’m not a nerd. Or so I would tell myself.

But I was. By all accounts, I was my own kind of nerd.

Quiet. Smart at the right subjects. But I wasn’t like normal kids. I wasn’t like everyone else.

Heck, life would have been so much easier if I would have just walked around with the geek label on my back. I guess part of me already knew the other kids thought of me as one anyway, yet it was like I wanted to ignore it and not think it was true.

And now, as I am just trying to learn how to make it out here on my own in a new town and such, I think it’s an ample opportunity to find others who I can be friends with by being none other than myself.

I don’t want to change drastically for anyone in that regard. I don’t want to pretend or put up a facade. If someone else wants to be friends with me, then great. There aren’t going to be any alterations as to how I act or behave outside of common courtesy.

In a sense, I just want to see if others can truly respect me for who I am as a person, as dorky as I may be, as strange as I can be at times and with all the other wacky or random aspects to my personality.

One thought on “Everyday NhanSense – Day 35”

If there’s anything I would go back in time and change in my life, it would be to have made friends and hung out with the nerdy, geeky kids back in high school. I think it was more out of habit that I hung out with the people I did rather than fear of being labeled a second-class citizen. Ironically enough, I was also just afraid of having to start over with people I only barely knew, who knew each other well already, even though I was very interested in what they were interested in and what they were up to. There’s always the future, though =)